We’re told that these salaries and bonuses are needed to compete with the private sector. However, they only seem to be worried about staying competitive on top executive salaries and I see much less interest in providing competitive salaries for everyone else.

The fact that our state’s leaders and their appointees have made giving pay raises to high level bureaucrats a priority while street-level bureaucrats like state troopers and teachers went neglected tells us that either this is what they want or that they are incompetent. I suspect most Texans are not going to like either answer.